A Lady of Talent by Evelyn Richardson Read Free Book Online Page A

disgust. “Even Neville understood algebra better than I. But I can quite see how someone truly skilled at it would find working with numbers intriguing—like a puzzle, in a way.”
    “Precisely. Only it is far more useful than a puzzle. It helps one to look at the world in an orderly way, to quantify results and then see why things happen. If used creatively it can help one to think, and... I beg your pardon.” Sebastian broke off hastily. “It is just that I have been talking equations with Babbage, and what he had to say was so inspiring that I quite forgot how dull it is to everyone else.”
    “No, it is not dull in the least. Incomprehensible, perhaps, but not dull.” Again her smile warmed him, and touched him in a way he could not remember having been touched before. “Even I, unschooled in this sort of thing as I am, can see that such interests and skills would, for example, make you a formidable opponent at games of chance—and I am sure that is only the most obvious part of it. And now that I think of it, my brother Neville did mention that you had something of a reputation for skill at the card table.”
    Sebastian chuckled, oddly pleased that she had been discussing him with her brother. “Yes, actually, I do rather well at cards, but to me they are less games of chance than of probability, as are stocks and bank shares and annuities, all of which entail a good deal less risk and a great deal more reward than the toss of the dice or the turn of a card.”
    “Which would make cards and dice a good deal more profitable, but perhaps less amusing for you than they are for people like my brother, who never know what to predict and thus live in a fever of expectation that the next toss of the dice or the next turn of the card will bring them a fortune.”
    “Or lose it.” Sebastian fell silent. The amusement faded from his face, and a look that could only be described as bleak crept into his eyes.
    Her curiosity piqued, Cecilia held her breath, waiting, wondering what memories or thoughts were responsible for that faraway expression.
    Then he seemed to collect himself. His lips twisted into an ironic smile. “I myself find the most intriguing part of it all to be the calculation of the odds, but I admit that my interests are rare to the point of being peculiar. For most people, as you so aptly observed, it is the fever of anticipation, the endless possibility, that drives them to such an extent that it hardly matters to them if they win or lose. And they generally lose.”
    This time there was no mistaking the bitterness in his voice or the bleakness in his expression. Inspired by an impulse she could not fathom or explain, Cecilia laid a gloved hand on his arm. “And I gather that you know someone who lost. I am sorry.”
    Again he felt the oddest urge to confide in her. He did not know whether it was the warmth of understanding in her eyes or that he had become so accustomed to addressing his innermost thoughts to her picture that willed him to do so. Almost without his being aware of it, the words came pouring out.
    “Yes, I did know someone like that: my father. He never met a game of chance he didn’t like, though faro was his preferred means of wasting his inheritance. He spent most of his time at the gaming tables of White’s, and then in less savory establishments as his obsession grew and his fortunes declined. My mother and I rarely saw him until the day he came riding home on a borrowed horse to tell us that he had finally lost everything, even the roof over our heads. And then he went out in the fields and shot himself. They found him the next day when the horse wandered into a farmer’s barn with my father still on his back. Unfortunately for us, he was the second son, so we had no entail to protect us and we were forced to throw ourselves on the mercy of his brother, the earl—as cold and selfish a man as you could ever hope to find.”
    Sebastian paused for a moment. He rarely, if ever,